I don’t often delve into the arena of the federal transportation policy. Generally, the feds are happy to toss some money the MTA’s way and leave the country’s largest mass transit system to operate on its own. Most of the time, it’s a comfortable arrangement for everyone.
Yet, sometimes, the FTA rears its head and requires the MTA — and the rest of the country — to enact costly safety standards. Does the federal government foot the bill? Of course not. Are these standards generally too costly and overprotective to meet the demands of the problems they are trying to solve? Of course.
Most recently, I examined how, in the wake of recent WMATA collisions in Washington D.C., the FTA was considering implementing local transit safety oversight measures that would require a higher level of safety standards than necessary. The costs would fall on the shoulders of the local transit agencies, and the FTA would ensure adherence to the standards by threatening to take away subsidies for those authorities unwilling to comply.
Today, we hear about another unfunded federal mandate that could cost the MTA nearly $700 million out of its capital budget by 2015. The MTA says its commuter rail lines don’t need this safety system because Metro-North and Long Island Rail Road trains already come equipped with sufficient safety controls. Tom Namako of The Post has the details:
The feds want a system installed that allows a computer to reduce a train’s speed in a number of situations. The MTA trains are already equipped with a similar system, but it kicks in only when one is in danger of crashing into another…
“It’s a lot of money,” said Bill Henderson of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. “And my belief is that the MTA’s railroads are substantially safer than many of the similar ones in the rest of the nation.”
Metro-North hasn’t seen a passenger die from a train crash in its 27-year history. The LIRR hasn’t had a fatality since the 1950s. Still, Congress mandated in October 2008 that all commuter railroads in the country install what’s known as positive train control after 25 people died in a California crash. But that California railroad — like most others in the nation — was using far less sophisticated equipment than the MTA’s, sources and documents say. Now LIRR and Metro-North — the country’s first- and second-largest systems — have until the end of 2015 to install the safety measures.
In a letter to the feds earlier this month requesting an exemption from these standards, the MTA highlighted how this system would provide only a “marginal benefit” but would bring with it “significant cost and risk to a rail system which currently has a high degree of safety. This one appears to be a typical no-brainer. If the federal government won’t pick up the price tag and if the marginal safety upgrades aren’t worth the significant costs, the MTA should not be expected to pick up the price tag.
I understand the purpose of federal safety standards. After all, someone needs to make sure that our country’s chronically underfunded rail lines are operating with acceptable safety parameters. But the FTA needs to show some flexibility, and here, that should lead to an exemption for the MTA.
10 comments
You sound like a states’ rights conservative! Watch out!
Much of the knee-jerk federalization seems premised on the notion that states and localities are just itching to put their own citizens at risk. But once you federalize something, why would the feds ever back down? What’s in it for the FTA to grant the LIRR an exemption? What if there is a train accident for any reason whatsoever? If so, the NYT, NPR, 60 Minutes, etc. (spoon fed by lawyers) would go after the FTA for granting the exemption, whether or not it had anything to the accident. There’s no upside from the FTA’s perspective for being flexible. This is a silly law that should be simply repealed. States have every political and economic incentive to operate a safe system without a further layer of rules governing what they do.
I’m hardly a states’ rights conversation. Yikes.
Anyway, the FTA has granted the MTA exemptions in the past. Does it make sense to bankrupt a transit authority with an acceptable safety record to implement redundant safety controls? I understand why the Feds want to get involved, but it doesn’t make sense for them to do so to such an economic extreme.
“Metro-North hasn’t seen a passenger die from a train crash in its 27-year history. The LIRR hasn’t had a fatality since the 1950s.”
This statement is a bit misleading. I believe that the railroads haven’t had PASSENGER fatalities due to collisions since those years, but there have been fatalities. Look at the 2006 Natalie Smead case, where a teenager fell through the gap between a platform and an LIRR train, only to be struck by another. I won’t debate that particular case, and PTC wouldn’t have helped it, but we must put the quote in context.
The LIRR has had its incidents, including a train sideswipe just over a year ago, and a fatality when a car was hit as a result of an alleged malfunctioning crossing gate just last year. PTC could have prevented these.
PTC protects against more than passengers. If there are crews working on the tracks, or if a rail condition (slip-slide) or broken crossing gate requires operating at slower speeds, PTC can be more effective than telling an engineer to “take it slow” at a given point.
That said, PTC is intended to kick in during overspeeds and blown signals by train engineers. My biggest fear is that the engineers become complacent, relying on this system to ensure safe operation rather than operating the train safely themselves.
The federal mandate, however, has come without the least bit of support, neither technical nor financial. There are lots of commuter railroads across the country tied to the same deadline date, and rather than organize to form a common solution, each is left to solve the issue on their own, which results in redundant work and a less reliable, less-tested solution.
Your biggest fear is that American trains will be operated the same way French (or German, or Japanese, or Taiwanese) trains are operated. To me, that’s a hope.
Yes. If the engineer knows that the system will cover for his mistakes, he may turn his attention away from the road ahead of him – and not notice a tree or a person across the tracks. If you don’t think its possible, look at the Northwest Airline pilots who over-relied on autopilot and missed the airport by 150 miles.
Is that why Japanese trains are fatality-free, while American trains crash spectacularly once every couple of years?
(Don’t even try to bring up Belgium – the line there wasn’t PTC-equipped. Neither are planes, by the way – they can’t stop automatically, unlike trains.)
By the way: the FRA is effectively mandating one standard, called ERTMS. It doesn’t mention it explicitly, but it asks for a standard with at least 5 years’ history of success, and ERTMS is almost the only candidate.
Is the government going to force the auto companies to implement some sort of “positive automotive control” to prevent the catastrophic car accidents that occur every day? Of course not; we rely on people to be smart enough to stay safe, and Toyota’s experience shows that once you give people too many gadgets where they become complacent, they don’t know how to deal in case something goes wrong.
The crashes in this country, and they always seem to happen in California, are all either operator error (engineer texting; MTA already has a strict prohibition on using cell phones anywhere near the track unless it’s an emergency) or public stupidity (yeah, drive your SUV around the gates to try and beat that speeding train). What a waste of money this is.
Cars kill 40,000 Americans every day. I don’t think having trains use the same safety system is a good idea. I’d much rather US railroads emulate the safety record of Japanese railroads than of American cars…
And think of the civil engineering companies who will have a windfall with a captive customer base, and holding the patents and software for PTC.
“2015 is coming fast, we will charge you a 200% expediting cofactor in the bill if you want to avoid federal consequences for being compliant”
What patents? There’s one global standard, ERTMS, which has already gone through the painful implementation process elsewhere. For greenfield rail systems worldwide, including California High-Speed Rail, it’s the only standard, and the FRA is making noises about mandating it as the standard to be used throughout the US.